Good models and clear concepts are required for a common terminology, and a common terminology is a pre-requisite for effective communication and progress in the field of patient safety.
Such approach provides an efficient and meaningful search of ***non-textual and textual information corresponding to a consistent terminology, and a lifecycle management of documents.
As a starting point, the European Psychiatric Care Assessment Team EPCATT) initiated in the year 1994 the development of a common terminology and a standard procedure for assessment of mental health services.
Initiatives such as the OMERACT address the challenge of standardizing and improving the quality of outcomes research by finding a common terminology and a common model of functioning and disability.
Simply because PTSD, unlike GWS, has an accepted terminology and a reproducible case definition, it should not follow that it too counts as an 'unexplained' syndrome similar to all psychiatric disorders.
The OpenTox approach to ontology allows for efficient mapping of complementary data coming from different datasets into a unifying structure having a shared terminology and representation.
Consequently, there is a need to develop a common terminology and typology for integrated primary care in order to facilitate program implementation, policy formulation and research.
Variations among the existing models also reflect the lack of a common terminology and the use of a plethora of terms and concepts with inconsistent definitions.
